Sunday 20 March 2016

Publishing Timeline: After Cerebus

Cerebus Publishing Timeline:
#1-100 | #101-200 | #201-300 | After Cerebus
Please report all errors/omissions in the 'Comments' section.

(Idea stolen from CBG #1267, February 1998. Thanks to Michael Cohen!)

32 comments:

Travis Pelkie said...

For that one issue of Following Cerebus, is the 8 supposed to be upside down?

I'd also suggest that the glamourpuss 18 listing be changed to Cerebus/Mad Men crossover, as that is the name of the TV show and that was what was in there, right? Maybe "crossover" in quotes, as well. I was thrown since the next listing had a Mike Allred cover, and he of course does Madman. (Man, a Cerebus/Madman crossover would be keen!)

In conjunction with the upcoming Cerebus covers book, IDW ought to put out a one shot comic size book with all of Dave's variant covers that he did for them. Heck, I'd probably buy 2 copies!

Jeff Seiler said...

That's a pretty good idea, Mr. Pelkie!

George Peter Gatsis said...

Right after Fire Destroys High Society Negatives...

George Peter Gatsis saves High Society Audio Digitial production and delivers.

After that...

CerebusDownloads.com goes online to deliver HSAD and other Cerebus content.

Just saying... :)

AND...

I don't see Cerebus Movie in the list....

George

A Moment Of Cerebus said...

Hi Travis,
i) FC#8 was the Mind Games special and the cover was printed upside down, so I intended a deliberate reference to that.
ii) 'Mad Men' changed. Thanks!
iii) I did ask IDW a while back about the possibility of a collection of Dave's covers. Chris Ryall said that might be a problem given that the IDW license over certain properties have expired. That's a shame if true.

Hi George,
Didn't mean to diminish your input into the original HS Kickstarter. It was difficult to squeeze all the significant events in to that tight space.

Thanks everyone.
Tim

George Peter Gatsis said...

Tim,

Simple... just expand the graph.

GPG

Travis Pelkie said...

D'oh! Forgot the upside down issue! Carry on! (I should have asked if that upside down 8 was deliberate and not an error...)

I know IDW doesn't have Doctor Who anymore (and Titan, current licensor, did reprint the series that Dave did covers for, the name of which I'm blanking on, but I'm not sure if they included his covers, and anyway they were truncated for publication), but off the top of my head, I think they probably still license any of the other things Dave did a cover for.

A Moment Of Cerebus said...

Hi George,
Hmmm.... and I'll need to include all the names of the 1,140 Kickstarter Backers as well.
"Just saying."
Tim

Travis Pelkie said...

Very tiny type, Tim. Verrrrrry tiny.

;)

George Peter Gatsis said...

Tim,

Put the Kickstarter list in a foot note.

Go verticle on the chart design instead of horizontal...

Then you can include the my undiminished participation... The Cerebus Movie... and other noteable milestones/events that don't have room.

Just saying-er...:)

George

Bill Ritter said...

Did Cerebus Archive run 18 issues?

I have 1-3...where can 4-18 be obtained?

Anonymous said...

Echoing Bill's comment: I was waiting to buy a batch of Cerebus Archive books from ComiXpress in order to save on shipping, since they were to have been forever in print by that company. Unfortunately, my plan was sabotaged when ComiXpress went under.

Any plans to reprint the Cerebus Archive books, either individually or en masse?

--Claude Flowers

Unknown said...

Hi Claude & Everyone! No plans to reprint CEREBUS ARCHIVE the comic book.

The situation that we're in is "what does the Direct Market [that is, retailers] want in the way of CEREBUS?" And the answer to that is: CEREBUS and HIGH SOCIETY and [to a lesser extent] the other trade paperbacks if a rare customer comes along who buys CEREBUS and HIGH SOCIETY and decides to persevere. This is a situation that is rare to the point of being anecdotal. WHY it's that rare is just going to get us into a very predictable argument.

You don't ARGUE with the Direct Market, you adjust your publishing program to align yourself with it. Which is what I've done. Top priority is keeping CEREBUS and HIGH SOCIETY in print. Second priority is keeping the other trades in print, which is why we're "full speed ahead" on READS. It will be the next book unless CEREBUS goes out of print suddenly, then that would take precedence.

Anything that ISN'T those would be putting Diamond in a nutcracker situation. "How many CEREBUS ARCHIVE:THE COLLECTION" do you want?" It would be a pricey 400-page book. If there are only 20 or 30 people who want it and Diamond orders the minimum 1,500 we would need to print then that's a substantial loss for Diamond. It definitely wouldn't be something the average -- or even a handful of -- stores would stock regularly.


Unknown said...

It originally went to ComiXpress because there weren't enough orders to keep it coming out from Diamond. The disadvantage of ComiXpress was, exactly as you say, the expense of ordering individual issues. On MY side there was a problem with the ComiXpress payment schedule. They paid when they thought of it and the average royalty cheque was around $75 or so -- for ALL of glamourpuss and CEREBUS ARCHIVE selling simultaneously. There was no way to verify what I was owed. Here's your cheque, here's what we sold.

That gets into cash-flow situations. There is only so much cash and I'm coming to the end of my life so MOST of that cash has to go towards scanning, digital conversion, preservation, etc. I could quick-print individual copies of THE COMPLETE CEREBUS ARCHIVE and have them bound as hardcovers and then pay to have them shipped to the people ordering them, but those are going to be $200 or $300 hardcovers by the time we get there.

I could put it on the KA-BLAM site as a collection, but I'm pretty sure that would get into the same problem: WHEN do they pay and how reliable are they? What do they charge for printing and shipping the book? Figure Sandeep would have 20 to 30 hours putting the digital files together...

Unknown said...

...is that the BEST use of his time? If it means getting a $75 cheque from KA-BLAM every three months, then, no, I don't think it is. If ComiXpress was just a badly run print-on-demand outfit and KA-BLAM is a well-run print-on-demand outfit, I could maybe justify the 20 or 30 hours of prep for a guaranteed return. But there is no guaranteed return.

Everything we do now has to pass a viability test before I even start doing it. The Cerebus Oversized Project does because there is virtually no overhead, apart from the hours Sandeep had to put in getting it ready to go. It's ALL digital.

We are working on various ideas all the time. Some we abandon and some we revisit and some just go barrelling ahead. TCOP was one of the latter, in no small part because the answer to the most pertinent question: "Is there a danger of losing a lot of money on this?" was NO and stayed NO throughout.

There is no "model" for THE COMPLETE CEREBUS ARCHIVE where the answer to that wasn't either YES or PROBABLY.

A Moment Of Cerebus said...

Hi Dave,
How about selling the Collected Cerebus Archive as a digital download on Sandeep's Sellfy site? That way you retain full control.
Kind regards,
Tim

Lee Thacker said...

A ‘Cerebus Archive’ collection of issues 1-18 (400 pages by Dave’s estimation) could be easily made available using Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/home). Printing costs for a perfect bound paperback edition at traditional comic book size would be £7.45 per copy (a bit less than $200 per copy!) No need for it be a hardcover.

The Lulu postage costs aren’t too extortionate (especially if you live within the USA) and they do discounts on postage for bulk orders. It’s print on demand so individuals (or retailers) can just order them from the site.

I’d be happy to put a pdf together and get a proof copy of the book to Dave for approval if Sandeep (hi, Sandeep!) wants to send me the digital files. I’d scan my comic book copies, but some of the pages (especially the reversed lettering) are rather low-res…

I know a lot of Cerebus fans missed out on the ComiXpress issues (4-18?) and they VERY rarely (if ever) come up on ebay.

Just an idea…

George Peter Gatsis said...

The Collected Cerebus Archive can be sold on CerebusDownloads.com site... for which Dave already retains full control over.

Adding additional books to CerebusDownloads is simple.

George

George Peter Gatsis said...

To Dave, Sandeep and others for thoughts...

Does it make sense to split all these download initiatives outside of CerebusDownloads.com?


George

George Peter Gatsis said...

And...

Tim... When can you run a posting on the latest update on the Cerebus Action Figure? It's been a while since I gave you a heads up... :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fglVjmDFxY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl4XZ-q2tug
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocCS0LJJeEo

George

Glen said...

I like the idea of a "Cerebus Archive: Issues 1-18" digital download as a reward on the next Kickstarter campaign.


Count me in.

Bill Ritter said...

Glen, I thought the same thing...with a but:

My preference would be that the PDF be configured to easily allow printing (as well as notice in the PDF permitting the consumer reprint rights). This would be something I'd like to have a printed copy of.

Michael R. said...

Hey, I guess I'm one of the lucky ones who not only has the Cerebus Archive 1-18, but has 3 copies of 4-18. There were 3 versions of 4-18 through comixpress. One FDC (first day copy), POD(print on demand) and the month it came out.

Michael R. said...

Uh, I wasn't the only one who got all 3 versions,right?

Unknown said...

mike r - You weren't the ONLY one, but you were in VERY select company. The FDC copies are definitely the rarest CEREBUS comic books, followed by the ones designated with the month, followed by the POD.

My memory is that the FDC there were maybe 15 to 20 copies.

It seemed like a sensible idea because it meant that the POD would be always available. It never occurred to me that ComiXpress would go out of business. So, now even the POD are EXTREMELY rare. Had I had warning, I would have ordered a bunch of CEREBUS ARCHIVE and glamourpuss for the Archive itself.

Unknown said...

GPG - I don't think cerebusdownloads.com is a destination. More like an ancillary environment to AMOC. We -- none of us -- have any idea what the psychology is behind any of this. cerebusdownloads.com is a much better idea than, say, Comixology. That is, it produces much better results, financially. Comixology is to cerebusdownloads.com what cerebusdownloads.com is to Kickstarter and what Kickstarter is to Diamond. That's the hierarchy of what Works.

Lee Thacker - After the experience with Comixology and ComiXpress, I'm not really looking to "sign up" with anyone and then never hear from them again. Or hear from them every five months with a cheque for $75. I'm not sure if everyone is embarrassed to admit that that's what happens or if these environments are just tailored to "other things". You can become a millionaire if what you're selling is what people are going to Lulu FOR. Outside of that you're just going to get a $75 cheque every five months. We're putting our time and money in on things that APPEAR to work or seem to have a chance of working. What that involves, mostly, is trying things and then crossing them off the list because they didn't work.

Unknown said...

Glen and Bill Ritter: We certainly TALK about ALL of these things. Between the noon and three prayer times, every Thursday, Sandeep and I meet and discuss everything under the sun. Nothing is off the table or ruled out automatically. That's across the full spectrum of: publishing work distributed by Diamond, publishing work that's sold directly, Print on Demand, prints, collections (broken down into WHAT would be collected and how).

But, that's internal. We can't do everything that every CEREBUS patron wants done. Everything that we do needs to be prioritized in terms of its likelihood of Working. The fact that Sandeep is putting in 20 hours a week causes its own pressures in that direction. What I could consider as Working when it was only me who had to be taken into account is now considered to be working or "working" because money has to be brought in to pay Sandeep as well as me.

One of the problems is trying to keep the dwindling number of CEREBUS patrons focussed. This post, which is about things that we're NOT doing, has 24 comments. The posts after that which are about what we ARE doing have 2 and 3 comments each.

Unknown said...

Just saying :)

Bill Ritter said...

Thread hijack alert!

For me, it was more a matter or "oh! there was more Cerebus Archive than I realized". I dislike(d) comixology, so ignored it and its output. Thus: I missed everything beyond #3 (which is now annoying).

In general, I prefer physical over digital, I don't really prefer posters, and rather prefer collections. To me, having a collection of Cerebus Archive is much more interesting than having a series of digital prints. Now, put those TCOP prints into an "Artists Collection" or "Adamantium" sized collection and I'm all over that. Love it that, want it on the shelf.

I realize this is "to each their own", and I own up to likely possibility I'm a freak, but I was more inclined to chime in with positive "I'd love if you did..." than to post "meh, not for me" on things not quite in my interest.

Ultimately, I wish for great success on all endeavors because as I've admitted: Cerebus (and by extension, Dave Sim) is my #1.

Glen said...

@Bill

Did you order the Collected Letters: Volume 3 on the last Kickstarter campaign?

If not it was available as a PDF download. I've been printing out the pages of the book (10 pages at a time) and reading the letters.

Travis Pelkie said...

I believe I also suggested making the Cerebus Archive comic available as a digital Kickstarter reward. Something to consider, at least, as that seems to be something (digital, that is) that wouldn't take up too much of your time (he says, probably wrongly ;) )

Bill Ritter said...

Glen, yes I did get vol 3 on the CAN4. Eventually, when I get the free time and focus, I intend to have it printed-bound and set on the shelf next to Vol 1 and Vol 2.

Travis, I like your thinking with using kickstarter.

Unknown said...

jeebus, I didn't know that Cerebus Archive went 18 issues. Where can I find 11-18?